EARTH MOTHER 33 Rti or rta means, according to Nighantu (1.12.68), water. This etymology denotes that Nirrti was orginally an apsaras, a water or river goddess. Rta also means 'cosmic law', which makes Nirrti the universal mother, the Prakrti of the non-Brahminic Sankhya philosophy.10 The above-quoted invocation of Nirrti by Taittiriya Samhita seems to have combined both the outlooks. By saying that she is called earth by the people (Bhumiriti tvajana vidull), the hymn expresses the love she evoked, while by stating that oblations have to be offered in her cruel mouth in order to free the sacrificer from her fatal sacrificial bonds (Yasyas te asyah krura asan juhomy esam bandhanam avasarjanaya) it expresses the fear she evoked. Being a ritual hymn, it has faithfully preserved an ancient reality. Then how is it that the same deity should arouse such mutually antagonistic emotions in her devotees ? The absolute exclusiveness of such emotions is the work of civilization, while in tribalism these antagonistic emotions exist not only in an inseperable unity, but are evoked by the same phenomenon. Briffault explains it as follows: . . . The distinction between 'good5 and 'evil' powers, to which our theological ideas attach so much importance, is of little relevance in primitive thought, and can indeed scarcely be said to exist. 'The classification of spirits into good and bad, or rather the attribution to some of qualities chiefly bad, and to others of qualities chiefly good', remarks Sieroszewski, 'has only arisen very late and is not very strict'. Primitive supernatural beings are essentially such as we should classify as evil and maleficent. Power in egalitarian primitive society is intrinsically an evil thing; it is synonymous with power to harm; for benevolent action being regarded as a natural duty between members of the same group, it is not viewed as a manifestation of goodness. The Santal of Bangal 'cannot understand how a being can be more powerful than himself without wishing to harm him' . . . ... In New Zealand 'all the bad passions of life, such as fear, anger, revenge, vindictiveness, malice, remorse, sorrow, are attributed to the gods; but those sensations that render life desirable, as love, prosperity, health, etc., are supposed to exist without any divine intervention' . . . . . . The object of primitive religious acts is precisely to placate, to propitiate powerful, and therefore dangerous, beings who are capable of doing harm ... Those beings are not always and necessarily thought of as 'evil'; but they are conceived as dangerous and irascible. They have the power to send diseases, to cause sterility in women and in animals, to bring about famine and render the earth barren; they have the power to kill. Consequently they have also the power to "withhold disease and to cure, to cause fertility in women and in the earth, to bring to life. Hence, one and the same deity is the sender of diseases and the deity of healing, the cause of sterility and the